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It's been just two days since I last player Ether One and I've not stopped thinking about it since. I thought about it before I went to bed last night, and the night before. I thought about it when I woke up this morning. I thought about it when I had lunch. So far I've sunk 12 hours into a game easily completable in four. I've not nearly managed to restore all of the projectors. And I've hardly scratched the surface.
While the standard high school drama bullshit is still incredibly prevalent, Life is Strange is shaping up to be so much more than that. Episode 1 showed great promise, and episode 2 delivers on the potential. It brings suspense and intrigue to the forefront, while still tackling the science fiction and drama effectively. Emotions run high in multiple points, always keeping you eager to see what's going to happen next.
Grim Fandango really is a masterpiece, although it's not a completely perfect one. The story, world, voice acting, music, script and style are some of the best gaming has to offer, rivalling the best animated movies. The puzzles are 80% superb, best the adventure genre can do, and 20% frustrating as all hell.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments is more than just an excellent detective adventure, it also absolutely nails the essence of being the pride of Baker Street and in doing so provides an exciting roadmap for where Ukrainian developer Frogwares will take the series next.
There's not many video games that treat war with the respect its participants deserve. Metal Gear is too preachy and ham-fisted while Call of Duty & Medal of Honour are bombastic dude-fests disinterested in reality. Valiant Hearts, by using the war as a backdrop and avoiding too much direct conflict, pays tribute to the 16 million that perished in The Great War 100 years ago and does it with humour, pathos and melancholy.
Match this with the Californian outfit's reimagining of Killer Instinct last year, and it would appear they know what they're doing when reinterpreting the classics. By adopting a Metroidvania-guise here, rather, gear-gating, Double Helix shows that it can in fact teach an old dog new tricks.
All you really need to know though, is this; Pillars of Eternity is a triumph.
There's a level of roughness here that I couldn't help but be a little disappointed by after such a long development time. For every smartly written sequence with vibrant locations and characters, there's an aimless fetch quest or an overlong combat section. Oddly enough, despite the content added in Wasteland 2's extra year of production, I think the game could have benefited from being cut down, edited to emphasise the best bits and get rid of some of the clutter. I like Wasteland 2, I really do, but I can't help but think it's not quite the masterpiece we were promised.
The fact that it has incredible value with a very modest price tag only helps that fact. How they improve on this is something I'm excited to see.
Does Reaper of Souls justify its asking price of a full game? If it only presented itself with Act V then no, but the inclusion of an all-new-ish character class and Adventure Mode does soothe the sting. Reaper of Souls, in conjunction with the Loot 2.0 patch, finally brings us the Diablo III we want and that fans deserve.
Buy it, love it, play it again with a different buddy, but always remember - never fart on another man's balls. Okay? Good, we're done.
GoD Factory Wingmen is a game where accessibility comes easy but mastery does not. Yet, the innate thrill in approaching the latter proves to be its own reward over the long-term as Nine Dot Studios sophomore effort proves to be its best, ably injecting new life into the space combat genre with innovative features and a real, loving focus on multiplayer gameplay and tactics.
It's a comforting reminder that video games can still hark back to their traditional roots and produce an enjoyable experience without any overblown live-action trailer or day one DLC. This is a delight to play.
It's an experience that truly stretched different parts of my mind in more satisfying way than Portal. Though the puzzles frustrate at times, most are put together thoughtfully and in a simple enough way that you can go away and figure it out on paper if you need to (I needed to, frequently).
The Blackwell Epiphany is a fantastic and poignant end to the series, and I really hope we can start mentioning Dave Gilbert in the same breath as adventure gaming luminaries like Tim Schafer, Charles Cecil and (sigh) Jane Jensen. And you know what? I think he could out-adventure all of them.
This is the finest available version of an excellent, atmospheric game.
Season 2 may not be overall better than Season 1 so far in my opinion, but Amid The Ruins is arguably the best episode of the entire series because it embraces story and choice/consequence gameplay better than all the others. And that's no mean feat. Kudos Telltale, now better it with the finale. And bring back that raccoon, he was great.
In essence, BattleBlock Theatre is not without its frustrating moments, but such is the nature of all puzzle platformers. Any negatives noted here exist, but are slight and surely nothing more than minor blips in what is a very rewarding, very well presented, and very enjoyable and hilariously funny puzzle platformer. As the landscape of these types of games becomes increasingly bigger, it's nice to see a game strive so hard for innovation. And in doing so can make the player feel like the cat who got the cream. Perhaps I should leave the jokes to The Behemoth experts.
Luftrausers is a great a time-waster, a great test of your leet twitch skills, and a game that doesn't assume too much and just lets you enjoy yourself. You'll notice that Devolver have published this game – I sometimes think Hotline Miami could learn a thing or two here.
If Telltale can keep pushing the boundaries like this for the rest of the season then it'll be at the very least as good as the superb first season. Until next time….