Nate Kiernan's Reviews
There are so few narratives in this medium that even approach what Life is Strange manages on so many levels, that even if it had to happen within a game which often couldn't decide what it considered important, what it accomplishes despite all its flaws should speak for just how much this game matters, and how important it is to experience for yourself.
Read Only Memories is adorable and cheesy and holds itself together with an acute awareness of tone and by subverting a genre it clearly loves to death.
Planet of the Eyes, for as much as it mirror's Limbo's mechanics, is wholly antithetical to that game's hopelessness.
The game Submerged could have, and by all accounts wanted to be is still hidden here somewhere, but that hardly matters when it so fervently refuses to let you see it.
Games like Dropsy remind us of the power of small actions and simple pleasures. It reminds us that art doesn’t have to be challenging or complex to be meaningful, and that positive emotions are not as worthless as the world wants you to believe. It reminds us that it is OK to feel happy when things are going bad, and that there are still people who truly want to make the world a better place for everyone. It reminds us that it is easy to hate people and a lot harder to love them, and it does so with such earnestness that it is clear the game recognizes the difficulty of what it’s asking but believes it important enough to do so all the same. Dropsy is a game that is powerfully loving in a way most media only plays at, and I cannot overstate how rare and significant that is.
I’m sure it is entirely possible to enjoy Lovers playing with just a casual gaming buddy, but there is a certain intimacy created while playing it that seems designed expressly with couples in mind. The ships are small and everyone has to play multiple roles to succeed, and while no character is better or worse than another I found that S. and I naturally settled into our preferred positions on the ship, which isn’t all that different from how I prefer to cook and she tends to do the laundry. Roles need to be filled and sometimes you have to play one that is less comfortable than you’d like, but at the end what’s important is that you are supporting each other. Lovers fosters this dynamic in a way that showcases how fulfilling it is when you allow someone else to support you, rather than try to pull yourself through all on your own.
Metrico was always an enjoyable platformer hosted on an unfortunate platform, so even if it took two years and the rebuilding of half the game, it is a welcome sight to witness Metrico+ finally save the original game from itself.
Expand's greatest deception is in giving the impression that its stark black and white and red color palette and plain geometric characters were born out of an inability to do anything more.
In looking backward Four Sided Fantasy reconnects with gaming's most baseline experience of a person, a screen, and the space in between, but it is in moving forward, sometimes clumsily but with determination, that the game finds something new to say about it.
Revolver360 is a sort of "cool" that didn't need explaining; a "cool" which leaked out of the screen like a kettle getting ready to blow its top and told me that I better get ready.
It sounds hyperbolic, but the amount of personality that has been stripped out of Live combined with the loss of developed multiplayer becomes increasingly depressing with each set. The crowds get bigger but the initial novelty fades and what remains is a stage full of people you don’t know. The crowd cheers and boos in time with your missed notes, oscillating back and forth as your vision blurs like some sort of rockstar purgatory where everyone comes prepared with “you suck” signs, just in case.
QUBE isn't going to be remembered as a modern classic, perhaps not remembered at all, but for a first person puzzle game it's just decent enough to be worth checking out.
It's probably an understatement to say I was rather taken aback by how much I ended up enjoying The Curse of Brotherhood.
Hatoful Boyfriend made me laugh; it made me smile and appreciate its subtlety; and it made me cry.
Having run through the Light in under an hour, I'm rather surprised I've even managed to even write this much about a game that's nothing if not hollow.
Neverending Nightmares feels so confident in its disturbed vision, until it comes time to actually say something.
There Came An Echo succeeds at proving an idea works and can add a lot to a game, but when that's all it does while bringing along with so much fluff it's difficult for me to recommend playing it on that basis alone.
The marvel of Fract OSC struck me to the point of immobility.
If by chance you actually have an aversion to FMV and B-movie stupidity, I'd be surprised if you come away from Roudabout with anything but a confused look on your face, wondering what you just witnessed and why I'm raving about it. To that, I say, phooey on you!
OlliOlli is pure, sublime skating perfection.