I loved the original Harlan Ellison story, and I loved the game -- especially for its story, voice acting, and fleshing out of the world briefly explored in the story. It also has a lot of that old adventure game charm, like the ones I grew up with. Some of the puzzles are fair; however, others can be a little rough around the edges. Certain necessary steps and the order thereof, like in Gorrister's branch, I would never have figured out without a guide. Still, much of it is quite doable without. Save often.
Five years ago, I acquired Hollow Knight second-hand from a friend, on PS4. I absolutely loved it, but only got the regular ending. Then, Silksong released on GOG, with Hollow 1 at a temporary sale discount. I bought both, greedily, with the hopes of 100 percenting both of them back to back. Hollow Knight is beautiful, sublime, bittersweet, challenging, and fun. The music is somber but beautiful. The world is intriguing and dark. The gameplay is challenging and excellent. I love this game. It is my favorite Metroidvania, of the old or the new. I look forward to completing it again, getting the best ending, and playing the second one.
As a lover of big rpgs with lots of choices, Arthurian romances, and modern fantasy, I really loved this game. The style blends elements of Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, and H.R. Giger. The reworking of Arthurian legend is weird, dark, and fascinating. The choices on how to build your character, who to side with in various quests and conflicts, the number of endings, the sheer vast amount of exploration, are all wonderful. I binge played this for 64 hours, doing all the side quests I could find (without a 100% completion guide, but looking up a couple things here and there), and got the best ending. My only regret is that now it's over, and I wish I could experience more in this world. Thank you to the devs for an excellent gaming experience; I really hope they do more games like this in the future.
I thoroughly enjoyed Myst and Riven - absolute masterpieces, alluring mysterious worlds of wonder and awe with puzzles both deeply challenging and rewarding. Obduction seemed intriguing at first...but I found it to be just okay. The story / premise was not half as mysterious and wonderous, the characters not as intriguing, and some of the major puzzles were rather tedious: The slow minecart puzzle, the tons of load-screen-inducing world shifting, and the tons backtracking just to see if I'd moved a piece into the right place. The big ones were a bit chore-like in the end. I'm hoping that, someday, they return to something more in the ball-park of Myst again.
Long ago, I found this game when I was 10 years old, in 1995. It was magical. As a kid who loved books, games, solving puzzles, and exploring the woods, this was perfect for me. It enriched my love of all those things, expanded my imagination, even influenced my aesthetic tastes. The remake does great justice to the original, and also allows old folks like me to use the original cinematics if you prefer those to the new ones. Great game. Play this and Riven too, and you'll have a very beautiful journey. And then when you're done, use the soundtracks for reading background music.
The original Soul Reaver / Legacy of Kain series is one of the best stories ever placed into a video game. Up there with Planescape: Torment in writing quality. Top tier voice acting. Excellent music. Memorable, moving scenes and plot moments. This remaster improves the graphics, polish, and quality of life while remaining faithful to the original. Loving it, so far. Thrilled to continue.
I had a good time with this game. The sense of humor and genre-tropes were pretty amusing, with a mix of Mad Max and zany / light-hearted humor. The puzzles mostly reasonable (only needed help with a couple at the end). A little pixel hunting with some of them stumped me for a time. You can highlight some clickables, but not all. Still, I'd say I needed *less* guide help than I do with most LucasArts point-n-click adventure games. Not the longest game in the world, if you're decent with puzzles, but good enough. The only solid drawback: a technical issue. Almost every single time I minimized the game, it froze and needed to be closed / reopened entirely. I know this was part-and-parcle for older games, but I'd figured we'd fixed that by now. Certain things, like alienware or nvidia, have overlay popups that automatically minimize the game -- thus, I had to figure out how to turn those off in my pc's settings to avoid automatically crashing the game. Even the transition from logo to start screen would crash, due to this.
I love adventure games. I love cyberpunk. I love retro-computer aesthetics. This is a combination of all three, and it was very enjoyable. I had a pretty tough time on a couple "password" puzzles, but other than that, all puzzles were reasonably challenging and fun. The game presents a faux 90s computer and internet browsing experience as an investigator of internet crimes. These escalate from copyright infringements (which I honestly felt guilty for enforcing) to, for the sake of avoiding spoilers, worse. While the genre itself might be considered retro at this point (point and click adventures), I loved them back in the day, and I still love them now. I'm really looking forward to the sequel, Dreamsettler.
Disco Elysium lives and dies by its writing, and it is written very, very well. You can lean into a redemption arc, take things seriously, get deep and philosophical, and really enjoy yourself. OR, you can lean into various flavors of insanity / absurdity, and nearly die laughing. Either way, this game is a very fun time. Just go in expecting mostly dice-based skill checks, like the ones in BG3 conversations, but little to no "combat" per se. Succeeding at them is satisfying; failing is often hilarious, if it doesn't kill you. Mood, atmosphere, and music are also very lovely. I sometimes put the music on separately to read, inspire writing, or sleep to, depending on the mood.
