Joanna Nelius's Reviews
It could be my own fault for not preparing well enough, or maybe I’m an awful player, but I would not recommend – at all – playing through Automatron at level 15.
Instead of headbanging gleefully as I progressed from level to level, I found myself banging my head on my keyboard.
Combing simple, carefully crafted scenery as the base to hide all its secrets, this game uses its horror undertones to give every puzzle a sinister touch and to literally open doors that tell you nothing about where you are going next.
Using various narrative and visual devices, The Town of Light serves as an interactive historical textbook. With roughly 2-3 hours of gameplay, it covers a lot of ground in a short amount of time, yet its execution seems to cloud its intention.
Do you want to know what Superhot is? It's pure mind-control and a little bit of the ol' ultra-violence packaged into an addictive game mechanic. It's, well, super-hot.
Set in a rural post-societal America, The Flame in the Flood is one part Noah's Ark, one part Oregon Trail, and two parts grit and determination.
It's recommend that you level up your survivor skill tree to 12 before beginning expansion – with good reason. The infected roam freely in the pastures, your enemies have guns, and there are fewer places to hide. I ignored this recommendation and started with a survival level of 5. It's not impossible to start the story this way, but be prepared to die. A lot.
The beauty of The Witness is that the puzzles transcend language itself. They pull you through a broad range of emotions – anguish, despair, desperation – but, once you finally solve that seemingly impossible puzzle, you can raise your fists in the air, victorious, and maybe taunt the game a little bit.
For a game that draws on the essence of a 80s or 90s horror flick, it takes many of the identifying tropes and defenestrates them.