The Punished Backlog
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South of Midnight’s plot never felt boring, holding my attention from start to finish. It’s a short experience that only took me eight hours to complete, yet one that I'll remember for much longer. If you have any interest at all in the game, please check it out, especially if you have a Game Pass subscription. It’s a tale unlike most action adventures, and it knows how to tug on your heartstrings.
In some ways, I feel like Rebirth of Souls was packaged neatly but ultimately rushed. The online PvP mode is cool, and it's fun to see how characters stack up against each other, but many people will clamor for a ranking mode, as all that’s here currently is casual play. I do find myself enjoying this fighting experience despite knowing it can evolve to higher combat heights. The cast is incredible for a first outing, and if Bandai Namco does greenlight a sequel, these characters will be more finely tuned and hopefully can duke it out in stage-destroying experiences. If you love Bleach, you’ll definitely find the right character for your enjoyment, and that is more reason to play it.
Scarlet Hollow is currently an incomplete masterpiece. I devoured the existing episodes twice, and I hope to play through them one more time with a different combination of traits before Episode 5’s release. The game told me early on that I can’t save everyone, but damn it if I didn't want to try. I truly cannot wait to play the fifth episode of Scarlet Hollow and return to this town.
In the end, what is The First Berserker: Khazan? It’s a deeply rewarding and engaging experience, if challenging a boss 50 times in a row sounds fun to you. The story is a huge miss, the characters are boring, and the setting is all of the drab of Dark Souls with none of the wonder, but the peaks here are incredible, and if you can endure the journey, Khazan is an awesome, awesome experience.
Finding Frankie is not a perfect package, with some genuine execution whiffs. The story is just sort of there, the implications are relatively shallow, and the gameplay loop is repetitive. Taken as just a horror game, Finding Frankie would probably rub folks the wrong way. But as an exhilarating parkour game, with genuine tension as your pursuer gets right behind you, it’s a blast.
KARMA: The Dark World is a love letter to David Lynch. While its framing narrative is a little too straightforward, its dream sequences craft nightmarish spaces that linger in the player’s imagination. KARMA won’t be for everybody, but neither are its inspirations. I hope to replay the game soon, revisiting the textual and puzzle box collectibles for additional hints at the future story that Pollard Studio seemingly wants to tell.
Rarely do I play a video game where I think there’s a little something for almost everyone. Promise Mascot Agency is a delightful video game that would be good for anyone who likes management or town-builder sims, who’s remotely into Japan or Japanese culture, who loves heartwarming characters, who enjoys driving in video games, who likes deck-building but doesn’t want that to be the whole thing, or who prides themself as a completionist. I loved the world of Promise Mascot Agency, and I look forward to any excuse I get to visit Kaso-Machi and see all my friends again.
Your House is a competent mystery game that suffers from its own ambition. Its central reading mechanic adds flavor to the experience, and it offers a decent variety of puzzles to keep players engaged. However, the narrative lacks bite, and the difficulty will be a turn-off for some. If you don’t mind a “just okay” story and are open to some wonky solutions, Your House offers some unique puzzle thrills. But just don’t expect a revelatory experience.
Destino Indomable is good but has some notable flaws. With a slightly longer story and more weight to your decisions, this could have been a must-play visual novel. The telenovela concept is great, and I hope to see more in the future. But for now, this is one show you're likely not to pick up.
Part cozy game, part comedy, part poignant self-reflection, Wanderstop proves even the most well-trodden genre can bear creative fruit. Its gameplay errs on the side of simplicity, and elements of the story—particularly the side cast and the ending—left me hungrily wanting more. Still, the soul of Wanderstop shines through, resulting in a narrative experience that is one of a kind.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is best enjoyed as a kind of Renaissance Faire rather than a 15th-century simulator. The game is at its best when it gives players freedom to explore. Sadly, the main quest has too many pain points where player autonomy is stripped, in favor of a trope-heavy narrative that feels ripped from a 2004 comedy sketch. Its best moments are rare, but when they do land, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II rivals the feeling of playing Red Dead Redemption or Oblivion for the first time.
Playing inkle's games for the past 10 years makes me realize that I am a fan not just of their games, but of them as creators. When you engage with new content from a familiar artist, you start to sense their fingerprints. Knowing inkle’s style made me all the more delighted by change-ups and familiar methods. While Expelled! is slower and clunkier than Overboard!, it’s also richer and deeper. Now, I have to stop writing this review, because I'd really like to get back to playing it.
Split Fiction is another great addition to the Hazelight catalog—one that solidifies the studio as the paragon of co-op gameplay. If you thought It Takes Two was a fluke, think again. Split Fiction learns from its predecessor’s story missteps, doubles down on the great platforming, and deftly pays homage to gaming royalty. The result is Hazelight’s most creative game to date, and—in my humble opinion—its best.
In the '80s and '90s, Carmen Sandiego was interesting because there wasn't a ton of content about the world that was made for children. How else were we to learn about continents and cultures without accidentally stumbling upon the horrors of this planet and its peoples? However, with millions of hours of free, great kid-specific content on the internet these days, I'd be hard-pressed to know why anyone would spend money on this.
The team at Yellow Brick covered a lot of ground in this first game, both in scope and physically in game with the number of areas available to explore. They did a lot of good things within their budget but I would love for them to scale back, hone the rougher edges, and focus on making them great. If you’re a fan of experimenting in combat with a charming cast, I recommend Eternal Strands for you. The story won’t move you, and the combat, while at times challenging, isn’t anything new. But if you’re curious, you’ll find the magic that keeps you coming back.
Dead Letter Dept. definitely shows some cracks. Visuals can get muddy, some of the lighting choices don't work, and, in more intense moments, it can be very easy to get lost. But in looking past the small hiccups, you can find a simple but evocative game with a lot of variety. While we weren’t always certain what choices determined what endings, we ended our time excited to dive back in. This is a labor of love from someone willing to escape the doldrums of corporate number-punching.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector iterates on everything its predecessor accomplished, maintaining the same heart while adding new challenges. It will delight anyone who played the first, and also serves as an exciting entry point for anyone new to the interactive novel genre. While the “good” path here is more obvious than the original, I already look forward to playing it again and making different choices this time around. After all—the sky’s the limit.
Dreamcore captures the imagination and serves as a nice proof of concept for what liminal space horror could look like in modern game engines. Sadly, it currently doesn’t feel much more than a pitch, and worst yet, one that outlasts its welcome. Eternal Suburbia is the stronger of the two current maps available in Dreamcore, and the developers promise that three more will be released in the coming years. The game is thus only two-fifths complete. I look forward to visiting the spaces the team creates; I'd just like them to scare me beyond the idea of getting stuck in an endless loop.
Paper Perjury is a delightful, solid mystery game for fans of the genre and the Ace Attorney series. It’s an interactive novel with a good amount of investigating crime scenes and presenting evidence. While it doesn’t do anything ground-breaking, it’s a well-executed indie mystery.
50 games; 25 bucks. UFO 50 is the best value in gaming since The Orange Box, and though other games have it beat in terms of depth, far fewer can lay claim to its charms. If ‘80s gaming is your jam, this is a no-brainer. And if it’s not… give it a try anyway, if only to appreciate how far this wonderful pastime has come.