It's a shame that The Callisto Protocol is so uninteresting at its core. Though it looks gorgeous on the surface, a dozen hours of nothing special can have a clarifying effect.
Windbound drops you in a world of wilderness and open water but fails to make exploration compelling.
In the end, there isn't much here that feels fully developed. While The Caligula Effect: Overdose has some interesting ideas, none of them really work. I suspect that after some time with The Go-Home Club, players will be longing to go home to the cozy comfort of a classic JRPG. Better to avoid this simulation from the start.
It is Bloober Team’s least scary, least interesting game. There needs to be more to Blair Witch.
Felix the Reaper is an exhaustingly tedious puzzle game that attempts to set itself apart with the patina of a quirky thematic approach.
Though Maid of Sker has an intriguing premise, it is very often a frustrating chore to play.
If you want a game that captures the fantasy cowboy life, let me point you in a different direction.
Maybe the most damning thing I can say about Close to the Sun is that the main story it’s so interested in telling—the story that everything else on the Helios funnels you back toward—just isn’t the least bit surprising. All of it borrows pretty heavily from the BioShock playbook, and all of the plot points it trots out have been done better (and far more shockingly) elsewhere. The portrait of Tesla it presents seems conflicted—and I hoped Close to the Sun would attempt to close the distance between the egomania that would prompt a man to build statues of himself and the gentle humanity Tesla shows elsewhere — but the game doesn’t do anything to dig into those contradictions. That’s the consequence of all those chase sequences. Close to the Sun just doesn’t have the time to dig into anything. It’s got somewhere else to be.
Others provide functionality, like Twilen, the opportunistic merchant who sells Ori shards, equippable stones that provide our hero with active skills or passive buffs. You won't need to interact much with Wellspring Glade's inhabitants to finish the story, but you'll unearth a treasure trove of side quests and secrets by dedicating time to the village. The more grounded, yet still clever, conversations with these new characters adds an extra layer of connection to the game's world.