Legend of Grimrock is a first-person tile-based RPG in the vein of Wizardry and Eye of the Beholder. You make your party from the ground-up, while it is all-around solid the customization is lacking: you only have picks between 4 races and 3 classes, though skills and spells are nicely varied and there is a solid alchemy system. You play as up to four prisoners thrown into a huge mountain and you need to get out... That almost is it for story. There is a much larger focus on gameplay and it is extremely fun classic dungeon crawling fighting, exploring, and spell casting goodness... To a point. The game's biggest flaw is its puzzles... Some are fun, a lot are creative, but a majority of them are confusing and tedious to the absolute max. By far the most horrible are the timing puzzles involving button presses and/or throwing items at the right moment, the demand for such precision and speed in a tile-based game with incredibly clunky controls is frustrating to say the least. Thankfully very few of these puzzles are mandatory, but they always have some sort of great reward. The sadistic design really discouraged me from checking out any optional treasures and side-quests. I really wanted to love this game or at least give it a 4 out of 5. However the utterly sadistic puzzles really discourage side missions which hurts the game's already piddling replay value due to the severely linear levels and simple character creation. Plus many of the dungeons also commit the cardinal sin of RPGs: being disorienting and labyrinthine mazes that are only somewhat helped with a map. You can find a lot to enjoy in this game, but just like with RPGs of old you have to trudge through lot of arbitrary difficulty between every good bit. If you like the sound of this game but are really on the fence, then go get Legend of Grimrock 2. It is basically this game improved in every imaginable way, from more character customization to better dungeon design to puzzles that aren't total crap.
Whether or not you liked it, there is no denying the Wii had some of the most creative games of its generation. One of the many cult classics found on Nintendo's money printer was De Blob, an unique game where you paint the world whilst avoiding hazards and enemies while also making sure said enemies don't make everything grey again. As De Blob paints things the world literally comes to life and the music peps up and is different depending on the color. You inevitably get missions that range from painting certain parts of the city certain colors to using multiple colors to paint in a landmark. It is highly reminscient of Katamari Damacy. The game is very simple, but it benefits from it and is incredibly cathartic to play. Its also one of those rare game that isn't open-world, but you will find yourself messing around for extended periods of time. The game's biggest flaw is repetition, you will be doing the same thing over and over again with little change throughout the whole game. The game has a goofy and simple story that is bound to make you at least chuckle. Though I prefer the Wii version, this PC port of De Blob is every bit as good as the original version and i highly recommend it for people looking for a simple but highly creative and charismatic 3D platformer.
