Kritiqal's Reviews
INK is brilliant and brutal paint flinging fun that flies by even as you struggle to catch your breath trying to keep up.
Aaru's Awakening employs difficulty in ways unconsidered and illsuited to its design, leading to a game which does little but frustrate at every step.
Firewatch succeeds on the strengths of its narrative, but struggles to reconcile its storytelling with inconsistent world building and awkward mechanical conceits.
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.
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.
A City Sleeps may tend to favor its least interesting and impressive elements, but while it runs short, in its most accessible state it is also its most ingenious.
Nidhogg embodies the aggressive, intoxicating thrill of competition.
Ori and the Blind Forest feels like Nintendo's second coming.
Her Story doesn't look like much, nor is it easy to do it justice through words alone, but it's nevertheless a game that's going to be talked about for years by anyone who takes the time to look below the surface.
Neverending Nightmares feels so confident in its disturbed vision, until it comes time to actually say something.
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.
I said at the end of my act one write-up that I could see Broken Age being the game that defines Double Fine. I still think that to be true, but unfortunately, it isn't as glamorous an image as I had first imagined it to be.
D4 deserves a shot and a chance to do better, and for whatever faults it may have I feel no hesitation in saying everyone should play it.
The marvel of Fract OSC struck me to the point of immobility.
Nihilumbra is such an exquisite game to look at, that it's disheartening to see such lovely artwork was wasted on an experience that only manages to dull the senses.
Ultimately Life Goes On has its cake and eats it too, so any attempt to make it out to entirely subvert the usual violent video game trappings would be dubious at best.
I feel like the only one stuck on the outside looking in at all the fun others are having.
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.
By making Slow Down, Bull so needlessly challenging and frustrating, Insomniac Games has diluted its purpose and made something that instead of helping relieve stress, only serves as yet another source of it.
Trying to view The Charnel House Trilogy as, well, a trilogy, is what made it the most difficult to fully comprehend.