[T]his is still Shadow Complex, well loved, and definitely a decent time. Just a decent time from six years ago and looking and feeling like it.
Few games come close to being this well made, this lovingly animated, and so madly pleasurable to play.
OPUS is very cute, and while the story obviously borrows heavily from elsewhere, and while the core mechanic will feel familiar to fans of Mass Effect, it was almost a lovely idea.
It definitely makes me very interested to see what developers Lemonsucker do next.
This is the genre done right, although with an upbeat, uncruel approach that feels atmospherically more reminiscent of Rogue Legacy than, say, Nuclear Throne. It's very silly in presentation, but very serious in pixel-perfect controls. Goodness knows if it's good deeper in, but I'm having a brilliant time not finding out.
It really is a lovely thing, offering a good amount of game for a tenner, rising above its own gimmick to be a little bit special.
Samorost 3 is so bursting with life, so lovingly crafted, that it’s impossible not to adore. I cannot think of a game whose soundtrack comes close to this, and few that are so pretty. Gnome’s yelps of delight, or enthusiastic dances, or the way he sometimes says, “Hop!” when he jumps, are idiotically adorable. It’s so alive, so intricate, and so graceful. I wonder if the difficulty will see it be a less celebrated game than the last two, but it really is a thing of beauty.
The overall result is a delightful, charming, and relaxing affair. It’s a Sunday afternoon television of a game, and goodness me, does that have a place. It’s funny, daft, and the look is incessantly fantastic. Backgrounds are beautifully drawn, characters are well animated, and the voice cast are all modestly strong. And it’s got Tom Baker in it. I had a thoroughly lovely time.
I still adore this game. It’s still the smartest, most elegant, most entertaining adventure game ever made. And now, if you want, it looks new and sounds amazing.
Just how many fist-bumps you're willing to sit through may determine your longevity with its achingly desperate attempts to be millennial and street (the loading tips are a confusion of Twitter and WhatsApp or whatever it is the kidz are into these days), but perfecting your drift by practise and tweaking is an extremely rewarding – if ridiculously arcadey – fun time.
A rushed ending is really the game’s only let-down. A larger conspiracy, or more surprising reveal, might have given it a heftier punch. And it certainly needed a few more puzzles in the later stages, a bit more to do. But these are minor niggles in a really splendid adventure game of the sort we see too rarely. Grown up, well written, carefully paced, and genuinely interesting to explore.
Clearly the Deponia series is loved by enough people for them to keep making more of them, so I’m sure this will be as gleefully received as the rest. But it’s a nasty, stupid, and most damningly of all, badly constructed adventure game.
I've had an enormous amount of fun playing this, obsessively clearing the map of icons, occasionally relenting and accepting I need to do one of the main quest threads to progress, riding around on the backs of mammoths, diving off cliffs into pools hundreds of feet below, wrestling crocodiles, being dazzled by sunsets, escaping labyrinthine caves, and using my "hunters vision" to track enormous beasts. It's undeniably great fun, and unquestionably a huge achievement. Just a very, very recognisable one, for all the best and worst reasons.
It steps on The Stanley Parable's toes a little too often, and doesn't have the chops to withstand that comparison – it would have been a lot more sensible to have avoided the seemingly deliberate comparisons altogether. But it remains wonderful just to look at, the rest a bonus treat.
Firewatch is a rare and beautiful creation, that expands the possibilities for how a narrative game can be presented, without bombast or gimmick. It's delicate, lovely, melancholy and wistful. And very, very funny. A masterful and entrancing experience.
