God of Blades. This is really a mobile game, but there's a Windows version still kicking around on Amazon, so I risked picking it up for a few bucks while buying other stuff. It's a sort of runner/melee combat game in which you control a guy called the Nameless King as he slices his way through hordes of enemies. The controls are very simple - swiping/pushing up, right, or down executes a certain type of attack while left does a parry. There are five campaign levels and a few extra modes for two-player fighting or just seeing how far you can go to rack up your score.

The game is reasonably fun and pretty short, but what really distinguishes it its sense of style. It's strongly inspired by 1970s sci-fi/fantasy book covers and prog rock album art, so the landscapes are trippy and the enemies look a bit like Chaos demons from Warhammer (Warhammer itself taking some influence from old books). As you get points, you unlock new swords you can choose from, each of which has a proper name and is introduced with some flavor text that reads like something you'd find in a Michael Moorcock story. Levels are introduced with covers of imaginary fantasy novels ("Guardian of the Black Clefts" by C. Percival Briggs!). I'm all about this stuff, so I found it very appealing.

Since it was primarily a mobile game, you can still find places to download the APK but it's no longer supported by newer phones, which is why I decided to just try the Windows version. The main difference is that the PC version lacks a mode that was supposed to check your location and direct you to nearby libraries to unlock rewards in the game.

You should try the mod that lets you time-travel through green rectangles and the prequel mod.

State of Mind, May 13 (GOG)-Unlikeable characters, incomprehensible plot, and boring and tedious gameplay. Richard was a dick throughout and I did not care what happened to him by the end (by the first third actually). The rest of the characters were fine but man Richard was terrible.

The story tried to be non-linear but it wasn't implemented very well. You could proceed with different parts of the investigation in different orders but then characters would allude to or talk about things that hadn't happened yet. At one point the nano-scanner thing was blown up on the sidewalk. I went to a different part of the city to progress the story, returned and the scanner was back, went to my apartment, and then back to the street and the scanner was in flames again. This made it rather difficult to follow the story but I got the general idea.

The gameplay is mostly just walking around finding and clicking on green triangles. What game elements there are are lackluster. There are some mini-game feeling sections where you fly and shoot a drone. There's a small maze at the end. But mostly its just click the green triangles and listen to the story.

Overall, pretty disappointed. This game had a Message with a capital M but after playing I have no idea what it was. Maybe the message was "if you're a complete asshole to everyone in your life, you too can save the world".

Oh and I forgot about the graphics. The backgrounds and environments were fine but those character models were ugly. Very jarring to see them. Maybe I was supposed to feel like they all looked like robots.

Full List

Hidden Folks, May 13 (Itch)-A Where's Waldo type game. Funny animations, clever descriptions, amusing sound effects. My only complaint is that staring at the black and white images hurt my eyes after a little bit.

Full List

Trek to Yomi (XSX Game Pass)

This is one of those games like Mirror's Edge that pretty much achieves graphical perfection for its time and place- a blend of technology and perfect art style. In this case it looks and feels like your are literally in an old Japanese Samurai movie. It feels authentic right down to its music and interesting collectibles that give you some optional lore. I cannot fault this games presentation or how it runs in any way.

Combat though, I'm not as convinced about. At its core it is a side scrolling brawler- a modern historical flavored Streets of Rage if you like. The levels have a bit more depth to them though, allowing you to often move into the scenery as well as just going sideways. The combat relies on timing more than anything else. If you just button mash, even the very first enemy you come across will simply cut through your attacks. It could be quite a good system and when you learn the timing it feels satisfactory. But it has issues. It's very slow and your attacks are always slower than the enemies. The enemy also seems quite capable of pulling its attacks and dodging away. Their combos blow past and cancel your combos all the time, resulting in you getting stun locked. Basically everything just comes down to you being able to perfectly time your first hit as they approach, otherwise your just going to be blocking and hoping their stamina runs out before yours does. On normal difficulty there are also some heavy difficulty spikes where the difficulty comes from the distance between save points...oh yeah each save point can only be used once.

It takes about 7 hours, and even at the end after beating the final boss, I never felt like I'd mastered the combat in any way- success feeling more like just getting a good run with avoiding stun locks. In summary Yomi is artistic perfection combined with very average combat.

Layers of Fear 2
Tormented Souls

Oh yeah, I read about that one just yesterday. I've moved on to The Talos Principle for now and all those puzzles where you have to record yourself are making my brain hurt. They aren't necessarily difficult (the ones I've struggled with the most so far didn't have that) but I do find them quite exhausting. I just might be willing to play another puzzle game after Talos but I don't think I'm ready for more time travel madness just yet, lol.

I really miss Layers of Fear 2
trying to find something like that

Since Portal 2 left me a bit unsatisfied I went straight for the next first-person puzzle game (and beat it already): The Talos Principle. I had been told that it's great but holy cow, the game has surpassed my expectations by far. Put briefly: it's not as polished as Portal 2 but in my opinion it is a far more impressive experience overall.

Frankly I did not really know anything about the game other than what you can see on screenshots and that it's supposedly great. So yeah, fundamentally it is kinda comparable to Portal in that it's also a first-person puzzle game where you have to overcome a series of logical trials. Of course instead of portals (and stuff related to portals) here you have a bunch of other mechanics, most prominently coloured beams which you control by placing prisms and are primarily used for opening gates. Over the course of the game you will encounter a growing set of mechanics, though, which gradually increase the complexity of the puzzles and keep things fresh.

As a result The Talos Principle isn't as concise nor polished as Portal 2 but it will keep you busy (and hopefully entertained) much longer and should also challenge you a lot more. For comparison, I beat Portal 2 in about six hours while Talos took me about 18 hours to beat and there's still some optional content left (which apparently leads to another ending - there's a bunch of them here). But as I said, I feel that this comes at the cost of a few dips in the quality of the puzzles. The Portal games are designed as these perfect linear sequences where every puzzle feels like (and probably has been) play tested and iterated a million times, with perfect control over what the player is taught and what is demanded of them at any given moment. Talos isn't like that.

Here you have large control over the order you do the puzzles in and the developers obviously even expected that players would sometimes give up on puzzles and return later (there are even achievements and other responses by the game for players giving up and returning). The game teaches you a bunch of the mechanics rather well but a whole lot of them are a bit obscure - quite a few puzzles aren't just about utilising what you've been taught but rather about "out-of-the-box" thinking that makes you discover a certain behaviour that you probably haven't known up to that point. And frankly I usually found this very frustrating, particularly because I felt that it was often very ambiguous whether you're just missing a solution within the confines of what you already know or you have to discover some rule that hasn't been taught nor required up to that point.

Also: some solutions are so bizarre that I'm still not sure whether I actually solved the puzzles or accidentally hacked them. In one case in particular the moment I finally solved the puzzle I felt no satisfaction at all, on the contrary, I was royally pissed off because the solution just didn't seem legitimate on any level. In the game's defence: there's a hint system but 1. you can only use those very rarely (I think) and 2. who would even use them? I wouldn't skip a fight in a shooter and I'm sure as hell not gonna skip a puzzle in a puzzle game. I think the game would have been better if it either taught all of these things a bit better (e.g. if you could observe those behaviours somewhere in the environment) or did not resort to solutions based on obscure and rarely required behaviour at all. Or, well, if "the ending" only required you to beat a certain percentage of the puzzles and left you with a choice which ones to ignore until the ending and perhaps solve later (not the same thing as optional super hard puzzles which the game also has). Anyway, the truth is that at about two thirds into the game I had grown a bit tired of it because of nonsense like this.

However, now that I've beaten the game, all is kinda forgiven. Yeah, there were moments of frustration and boredom but all in all I'm just super glad that I've played and finished this game. And it's not quite thanks to the puzzles.

At first glance Talos has a pretty random setting where you play a humanoid robot thing interacting with sci-fi stuff in Greek ruins. Some of this is surely just the result of the game being rooted in the Serious Sam series but even if that was where the developers started: The Talos Principle is an utterly beautiful thing of its own. At the start of the game you basically awaken in paradise and are literally guided by the soothing voice of God. The game doesn't even try to hide the fact that is not a real place, though - just a few minutes in you begin to find audio logs as well as computers with a DOS-like interface that give you access to messages which establish right away that whatever this place is, it was created in response to some cataclysm. Its exact purpose, though, and who you are and why the place looks the way it does and why you're solving all those puzzles, though, is a very interesting mystery, actually.

And between walking around the gorgeous (though sometimes a bit eerie) worlds to beautiful music and solving all those arbitrary puzzles, you will read a whole bunch of quotes by real philosophers and novelists as well as chat logs of (made-up) regular people debating the most profound issues there are. I was fascinated by some of it right away. As the game went on I wasn't always sure what to make of it and whether its genius or pretentious but the truth is that the game got me intellectually and emotionally engaged like few games have over the last decade and by the time I reached the ending I was immensely satisfied and literally had goose bumps. A year or two ago I had praised The Witness a ton for similar reasons and while I still think that as a puzzle game The Witness is on a higher level than Talos, I found the latter to be an even more fascinating and gratifying experience all in all.

Long story short: I think The Talos Principle is a masterpiece. It's not perfect as a puzzle game but it is one of the most amazing overall experiences I've had as a gamer. And I'm definitely not done with the game quite yet. I don't think I'll have the patience to beat all the hardcore optional challenges but I'll surely try to get a few more of those and I will definitely play the DLC.

Celestian Tales: Old North, May 15 (GOG)-It's way too short and way too easy but it does scratch the JRPG itch a bit. The story and plot twists at the end got a little ridiculous but I am interested in seeing the rest of the story in future games. I am curious if playthrus with the other characters fills in more of the puzzle. Online forums suggest that they do but with so little additional content implied I'm not going to try it.

Full List

Citizen Sleeper (XSX Game Pass)

This is right up there with the top narrative driven games I've ever played, I'm not the only one that thinks so either with it already gaining "overwhelming positive" on Steam and 4.7/5 stars on Xbox. It's basically like a video game adaptation of the solo RPG board games that were around in the late 70 and 80's, or even those Fighting Fantasy Game books. The only similar video game I've played in recent years was the much smaller "Tharsis".

You play the role of a renegade "Sleeper", which is a synthetic body with an emulated mind from a human donor. Sleepers have a built in degradation cycle to hold them indentured to their corporation as slaves. If you think this sounds a lot like Skin Jobs in Bladerunner, then you'd be correct- except maybe the bodies are more mechanical and instantly identifiable as what they are. Your sleeper escaped in a shipping container and ends up on some broken down forgotten space station, abandoned by its former corporation. You forge a story for yourself through survival, deciding who to help and making friends- no real combat here.

It starts off feeling very difficult, though not nearly as difficult as it seems- a lot of it is really smoke and mirrors. But it gets easier as you progress through several story milestones- like removing your tracker. It's an oddity of a game in that it starts off hard to drive home the feeling of despair and desperation, but gets easy at the end- sort of the opposite to most games. I'm sure this is deliberate and part of the intent of the story. It has multiple very satisfactory endings, none of them being rigid good or bad...it really depends on who you are philosophically, and what you value, with where you go with the endings. I took the longest path to an ending, so spent around 10 hours. Well worth playing, it will be hard to beat this for Indie game of the year. It's on GOG, Steam, Epic, Switch and Xbox/Game Pass, everywhere except Playstation. If you like narrative driven experiences then you want to play this one.

Crush Crush & Blush Blush

I think technically I've been playing Crush Crush for almost 6 years, though intermittently and with a long hiatus, and started on BB within the last year. These two games occupy an awkward space between clicker, idle, and dating sim. Both have their charms, but also some pretty significant limitations and drawbacks.

For the most part they are mirror images, with CC (the original) involving clicking/idling for female companions, and BB (the sequel, of sorts) male companions.

The good:
- At least some charm. The "Bearverly" character in particular hits the same comedy note as "Hatoful Boyfriend." BB then borrows from that slightly less successfully with all the characters as animals. That said, a lot of the people/animal transition images are pretty funny, particularly in the date scenes.
- The "dialogue" has its moments.


The bad:
- CC has a ton of characters, but it engages with most of them pretty shallowly, and for the most part they're really thin caricatures that you'll roll past. The 'text' bonus game that I think was added later has a few well-done moments, particularly the ones that break the third wall, but also pretty inconsistent and at times pretty bad.
- BB, conversely, has the opposite flaw - they clearly spent a little more time writing these characters, but fewer of them, and the game wants you to level each of them far too many times, involving far too many touches.
- BB in particular requires too many painful clicks. For example, in one prestige you might 'date' the same character several hundred times, and then repeat that over a dozen characters. There is a purchasable DLC character that will speed up this part of the game (which I didn't) but without that aspect of the game...seemingly there's really not much left.
-If you aren't dropping $$ on it, the mid-game of BB in particular is way too long and repetitive, particularly given the limited nature of the "gameplay" and clunky UI.

If you like idle/clickers, well, these aren't great entries in the genre. The dating sim elements are really what gives both their real shape, and on that point they are both somewhat charming, but with some significant flaws. I think there is also a purchasable adult patch for both - I honestly can't imagine it's very good but can't speak to it specifically.

However these games are both within more of a corny space than a horny space - the fact that the peak of the games is a large aggressive bear in a bikini I think is telling.

Include me.

Recently completed Sleeping Dogs' main story. Great game in all aspects and probably my favorite open-world game. Definite recommend.

Cursed Treasure 2

Considering I just played it through for the 3rd time, I would probably say it's my favorite Tower Defense of all time. It just sings to me to fire it up every 4-5 months. You are some sort of cartoony evil thing trying to stop various heroes, pirates, and animals from stealing your gems.

On the whole the gameplay is well designed and well-balanced, and also incredibly fun (for me). I appreciate the light RPG-skill system and the array of choices it offers, as well as the broad and creative mix of enemy types and counters to your defenses (speed, stealth, camo, incapaciation), and the array of tower choices.

Some TD games use strict tower placement rules, and others no constraints at all. This game has a pretty creative balance - there are 3 main tower types, and the terrain color determines which tower type can go in each space (orc, demon, and undead), but there are also nodes that allow for any type, and then each of the three has branching leveling options that suit different strategies (distance, aoe/multi/single, fear vs. freeze, etc.). While there are optimal strategies, there is also flex to play to what suits your mood tto a great extent and still progress through the levels.

There's also a relatively simple but powerful spell system, and the game requires juggling two primary currencies - gold and mana.

A few minor quibbles:
1) By end of game you'll likely have all skills maxed, so early choice largely washes out by the end. Likewise, on most maps you'll be resourced-starved early, but potentially swimming in mana by the end.
2) If you want to "Brilliant" every level, that will require both some luck as well as a perfect plan, and that's because you loose the 3rd star as soon as any enemy even touches a gem and they have lots of tricks to accomplish that. The early levels can ultimately be brillianced just by over-leveling, but the final three maps

The dev has an announced an updated version (Collector's Edition) for sometime in 2022 that will add 3 new maps, but also tweak a few systems, such as loosening the threshold to earn 3 stars. I'm not sure if that will actually improve the game - it might, but it may also just be lowering the difficulty for people who are chasing achievements. As it stands, I think the game in its current state is actually the right balance of accessibility with optional raised difficulty.

Still, I enjoy this game enough that despite that buying the CE version is at least on my radar. The current version is available for the relatively cheap price of $4.99 even not on sale and personally I'd say that's a steal!

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising (XSX Game Pass)

It's a short 2d sidescrolling JRPG. I think I read somewhere that the game is led by the the creator of the Suikoden series. Rising is actually a shorter prelude to the main game that is to be released next year sometime.

The game does feel like a prelude as well. It's quite easy as far as JRPG's go and would serve as an introduction to this type of game for sure. The ending also obviously sign posts where the story could go, assuming these characters will continue into the main game.

The game takes a long time to really get going, but is quite good once it does. It has a good action type of combat system. Each of three characters simply uses one of the controllers face buttons for their attacks, and chaining team attacks is easy. I think the old Valkyrie Profile games used something similar. The graphics are quite good as well, each scene looking like a painting. The game is pretty good without being anything mind blowing. It probably achieves its aim of introducing the series and it does enough for me to know I will definitely play the main game when it releases.