The Myst games will always hold a special place in my heart, and although their spiritual successors like Obduction and The Talos Principle fill much of the same gap, there’s nothing which is quite like them. The complexity and challenge of the puzzles has long been a source of frustration for some players, as the game never holds your hand or offers hints. Riven and its sequel Myst III: Exile are the clear highlights of this formula in both style and content, with Exile still being my personal favourite. For this reason I do hope that Cyan feels comfortable giving Exile the same remake treatment next, even though they weren’t the original developers (that being the long defunct Presto Studios). The Riven remake is an expert modernization and expansion to the original, bringing its gorgeous worlds fully to life, and still packed full of fairly challenging puzzles.
Nevertheless, this is probably The Chinese Room’s most accessible and broadly appealing game, taking its fastidious approach to worldbuilding and applying it to a seldom visited realistic setting, while merging that with the tried and tested stealth horror of Amnesia or Alien: Isolation. Still Wakes the Deep is short but sweet; a game which delivers you the thrills and tension of its collapsing oil rig rollercoaster with fine precision.
For aficionados of stealth platformers, Ereban: Shadow Legacy is certainly easy to recommend.
While the ending is rather anticlimactic and doesn’t really resolve anything (perhaps being set aside for a sequel), the journey across snow swept alternate 19th Century Russia in the shoes of a struggling nun was a memorable and worthwhile one. The writing is consistently interesting as Indika vacillates between her own concepts of good and evil, those of the Russian Orthodox Church, and those temptations and evil thoughts whispered into her mind by the Devil metaphorically on her shoulder. While she always tries to do the right thing, society and the establishment don’t necessarily see it that way. If you’re looking for a narrative adventure which is stylishly pushing the genre forward, Indika absolutely delivers.
Highwater has some good writing and atmosphere, but the light exploration and turn-based battles don’t feel particularly engaging.
Alone in the Dark is a slightly more campy form of horror compared to Resident Evil, with its focus on occult magic and otherworldly monsters over evil megacorporations unleashing deadly bioweapons. The performances and story of this remake kept me engaged, but weren’t groundbreaking. That said the atmosphere was strong throughout and included a number of moments which felt genuinely unnerving, although nothing as terrifying as Resident Evil Village for example. As a tribute to its original namesake, Alone in the Dark certainly lives up to being the best game in the franchise since The New Nightmare in 2001.
A Highland Song is frequently beautiful, elegiac and magical, but one’s tolerance for its somewhat uneven gameplay will impact how much you will get back out of it. It should also be mentioned that on PC there is no mouse support, and while it plays fine with a keyboard, a controller is certainly the preferred method. Nevertheless, I did enjoy my jaunt across the Highlands, whenever I wasn’t falling off them or getting lost in the rain.
SteamWorld Build is still a lovely merger of streamlined city-builder and dungeon delver.
While the hard sci-fi story is consistently interesting, the slow pace of The Invincible may be frustrating for some.
The Talos Principle 2 somehow managed to impress me even more than the surprise of the original game did, leaving me completely blown away not only by the sheer size of the game, its beautiful environments and interesting characters, but also the masterful integration of the puzzles into both the world and the storyline. It might seem artificial and contrived to be solving these puzzles, but in the same way that the Portal games managed to make them seem entirely natural, so too does The Talos Principle 2 ground them geographically and philosophically within its world. It might have been almost a decade since the first game, but The Talos Principle 2 was more than worth the wait.
Phantom Liberty and update 2.0 absolutely makes Cyberpunk 2077 a lot closer to what its original vision had promised.
Starfield is an enormous and impressive experience, but it struggles to make its myriad parts feel like a cohesive whole.
En Garde! is a game which invokes the spirit of Zorro in the best way.
For those well acquainted with the works of the famous French author, Verne: The Shape of Fantasy is an unequivocal recommendation.
Viewfinder might not be a particularly long experience, but I never stopped loving its unique photographic magic trick.
Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099 skews rather too close to simply redoing the original game again but in a futuristic setting.
Like a Dragon: Ishin! is absolutely another Yakuza/Like a Dragon game. If you love this style of game, and are ready for the sometimes slow pace the story moves as well as some of the more frivolous side activities and stories, you’ll get exactly what you were hoping for plus plenty of fun surprises. However for those who either haven’t tried the franchise or have dipped in before only to bounce off, this game doesn’t offer any evolutions on the formula which might tempt new players, beside the historical setting itself. But if you even have a passing interest in Japanese history, you can learn a surprising amount from it.
Tails wonderfully brings more context and depth to the world of Backbone, while telling some interesting stories in its own right.
Chained Echoes is a must-play both for fans of old school JRPGs as well as story-centric role-playing games.
The Oregon Trail is absolutely one of the paramount classics of the edutainment games genre, and this newest version pays homage to that history while also introducing plenty of new content, and being more inclusive in its treatment of Native Americans. With plenty of unlockables, different modes, collectables and quests to undertake on every journey, the variety of things you can encounter means no two expeditions are likely to be the same. Plus, it might teach you a thing or two about 19th Century pioneer life along the way.