But most of all, Manifold Garden makes me break out in a cold sweat. I cannot help but imagine myself, trapped in an endless kaleidoscope.
Afterparty as a whole is surprisingly funny. I did actual out loud laughs sometimes, not just strong exhalations through my nose.
The Outer Worlds is alright, innit. It’s good fun. Sit back and let the orange and neon wash over you. Boo the cartoonishly evil corporations. Exhale through your nose at their Diet Toothpaste. I bet I’ll play it again, in fact. But you can tell it could have been great, if it had taken a few more risks.
A masterpiece, but flawed, and proof positive that if ZA/UM can do flawed masterpiece for their first outing, they might already be chipping away the flaws in time for their next.
Neo Cab is certainly strongly anti-corporate. I already agree with that, so I don’t know if Neo Cab has the power to change minds. But it does excel at capturing how messy things are becoming. How it can be difficult to know what the right thing to do even is. How some people have more breathing room to be ‘good’ than others.
Most of the inhabitants of Mutazione are engaging and lovely, especially the ones who aren’t. You will have favourites, and you will know where to find people, running around to talk to everyone like you would in the hub area in a BioWare game.
The question of whether Telling Lies is voyeuristic or not doesn’t necessarily have a bearing on the quality of the game — I do, in fact, think it’s good and enjoyed it. But the idea that it isn’t voyeuristic is some laugh.
The main thing preventing me from enjoying A Place For The Unwilling is that currently there are dozens of little things that don’t work quite the way they’re supposed to, and while they don’t exactly stop you from playing the game, they’re still bloody annoying.
So, it’s a game with two key strands that feel forced together when they don’t really work in tandem. I like both ingredients in theory, but they don’t coalesce successfully, like how a vinaigrette salad dressing will separate into oil and vinegar until you shake it up again.
At the heart of Sea Of Solitude is the idea that all emotions can have a positive or negative form — love can be twisted to be something unhealthy or saddening, for example, just as being alone can be quiet solitude or debilitating loneliness.
Goodness, I was very interested in The Sinking City. I really wanted to love it. But I’m afraid rain may have stopped play this time.
Draugen does a lot of tropes very well, but it does others in a tired way that garners side eye from me.
I’ve been very positive about A Plague Tale so far, and it is indeed a good game.
I wish my adventure on the Helios hadn’t ended so abruptly and I feel a wee bit short changed, but I’d still be really pleased if they announced an add-on
The thing is, the problems are there. I don’t know if I can recommend this to someone who isn’t a word nerd. But at the same time, what Inkle have achieved in Heaven’s Vault is tremendous. I don’t know what to compare it to, because there isn’t anything.
Trüberbrook isn’t bad, but it feels like a wedding cake with a couple of tiers missing. Beautiful icing, great craftsmanship on show, but somehow not all there.
The best bit of The Occupation is creeping around and scrabbling through paperwork, and that bit is bloody brilliant.
If nothing else, this is a game where you, a gorilla, can punch a man so hard that he crumbles into his constituent parts, and then pick up his arse and hoof it at one of his mates. I don’t know what else to tell you.
I want to want to spend more time with it, because there are bits of it I really enjoy. But it needs more than the world map to change a bit, or have seasons, or better social interaction. It needs changes to how it actually works, which is a lot to ask. But the biggest fight I’ve had with Anthem so far is against Anthem.
When you reach a milestone you get a moment of pure, unadulterated glory, but it’s fleeting, like craving a cigarette and quickly realising that nicotine is a chemical lie and cigarettes are shit. Progress feels so gradual as to be nonexistent, and can be instantly wiped out — but not in a calculated way like the difficulty of Dark Souls. In a sort of hopeless way. Each warrior is a tiny Sisyphus.