Lee Mehr's Reviews
The team's reputation in visual design and soundtrack are supplemented by a tautened horror thriller that's oftentimes engaging to watch; however, it's degraded by shallow mechanics that are typically unrewarding to play. Like oil and water, there's an incongruous mixture of creativity within its setting (both spoken and unspoken) and utter predictability within its foundation. Genre fans can treat it like oil spill remediation, mentally separating the two enough to at least appreciate its better qualities.
The good news: Ingame Studios is giving out Cagnali's Order for free (for a limited time). The bad news: neither this expansion nor the main game are worth your time.
If willing to accept this expansion's tradeoff of creativity over longevity then pay the toll and cross into... Night Springs.
Hypercharge's fun conceit and impressive suite of content earns appreciation given Digital Cybercherries' modest means, but its mediocre mechanics make other toys more tempting to play.
Although Cosmonaut Studios' temporal narrative adventure doesn't capture the true gameplay potential of its trippy concept, the storytelling still makes it worth your time.
Leave it to Ubisoft to craft a hero shooter in as boring a fashion as its weaker open worlds.
There were several different ways Midboss could've approached this sequel, likely all of which would've been better than Read Only Memories: NEURODIVER.
Between atmosphere, mechanics, and storytelling, Crow Country gets caw-fully close to bonafide classic status in the survival-horror pantheon.
Surgent Studios' debut title is a tale of two extremes: enthusiasm for this heartfelt story about grief and apathy for the Metroidvania around it.
With its closest inspirations at the forefront (Playdead & Studio Ghibil), Wishfully's debut makes great strides in honoring them both, despite also retreating back to safe design tropes too often.
While some gameplay limitations dampen its mechanical & narrative potential, Loretta remains a harrowing & surreal ride through a twisted psyche.
While it's impossible to ignore the surfeit of launch-window technical issues, Abstraction Games recaptures the mechanics & magic that places Gigantic among the best multiplayer games of the past decade.
Between its great pacing, breezy atmosphere, and more, Botany Manor shows Balloon Studios has a green thumb for game design.
No copycat should be satisfied in reproducing its inspiration without incorporating a visual, aural, story, and/or mechanical nuance alongside it. None of these four categories are met here, so what's left is a ditto platformer that's content with showing yet another hellish landscape after humans are nearly wiped out.
All of Bulwark's building blocks are here for any genre fan to appreciate, but the finished construction is still left wanting.
While certain design qualities feel anemic compared to the original's legacy, Pieces Interactive's reboot contains a special atmosphere & story that survival-horror aficionados will likely appreciate.
With catchy & enticing rhythm gameplay through pleasant dreamscapes, Half Asleep's debut title ensures you'll be anything but.
Even after correcting some of its predecessor's foibles, Coming Home reveals that the series' core gameplay & storytelling contradictions remain deeply entrenched.
Mediterranea Inferno's potent mix of enflamed sexual energy, pandemic frustrations, and tattered friendships is slightly too inconsistent in execution, but still earns some appreciation nonetheless.
For a title so reverent of history, it feels like divine justice that Obsidian's special narrative adventure earns such a high spot in the annals of its own.