I heard good things about Ethan Carter back when it came out and even recently from a coworker. So, seeing that I have the game on Epic, I decided to give the Redux version a try. My initial impressions were quite positive: the graphics are quite good, the music is pretty nice (if not terribly memorable), and Miłogost Reczek has a good voice. Unfortunately, that's about where the positives end. I quickly discovered that the game not only doesn't hold the player's hand - which I'd be fine with - but it seems to actively discourage being played. There are no directions given, no hints or clues as to where to go (it's like the game expects you to just know this), no map of even the most rudimentary variety and the environments are absolutely huge with hardly anything to do in them. It's absolutely unplayable without a guide, you'll just run around blindly, hoping to stumble upon anything at all. All this makes Ethan Carter a mind-numbingly boring experience that drags horribly. On the technical side of things the game is admittedly quite stable, I never had a single issue, crash or even frame drop. On the other hand, after launching it again the next day I discovered that the game reverted me back to the default non-inverted mouse look (which is actually inverted, but Quake swapped the defaults from Duke 3D). Also, there's no jump button, which feels just wrong (and caused me to keep zooming in instead while running around), and sometimes the lip-synching on NPCs didn't match their dialogues at all. And lastly, all the letters and notes you find throughout the game are in English only, even if you set another language in the settings. Why? Overall, a terrible waste of time that I cannot in good conscience recommend to anyone who values that precious commodity.
I saw GRIS in some YouTube video or another, thought it looked unique and decided to give it a try. And the initial impressions were quite encouraging: the art style is really unlike other games I've seen and the music is pretty nice too. Unfortunately, that's about where the positives end. GRIS seems to take some inspiration from the Metroidvania subgenre, but misses the mark completely: there's no map (and the game's pretty confusing at times), the power-ups are very basic and you never backtrack to explore where you previously couldn't. You just keep running to the right (or sometimes left) through rather empty environments (whose unique art style gets pretty monotonous after a while, largely due to a very limited colour palette), do some platforming and sporadically solve a simplistic puzzle, and that's it. There are no enemies to fight or even hazards to avoid; the best you get is a huge bird that knocks you back by screaming, but that's just a puzzle to be solved, not a boss fight as you might expect. On the technical side of things, at least GRIS runs very well, with no crashes and a stable performance. For some odd reason, though, the game doesn't let you map any of its controls to Num5, which is a problem to me, because I use the numpad instead of the arrow keys for movement. Also, the weird camera, with its constant zooming in and out, doesn't help any. Overall, GRIS had some potential in the art department, but squandered it completely with its gameplay. And I just now realised I didn't even mention the story, which goes to show how much it mattered. Suffice it to say, I played the better part of the game without encountering much of it, finally gave up during the underwater level (where else), checked the ending on YouTube and decided it's not something worth enduring the entire game for. Give it a pass, unless you can get it really cheap so that you can take some nice screenshots to put on your wallpaper.
After hearing so much praise heaped on this game (looking at you, GGGManLives), I finally decided to check it out and I wish I hadn't. Hardly anything worked for me. The levels are very dull, with most of them being the same office building over and over, and corridors set at 90 degree angles like it's still 1992. You can only carry three weapons at once, but then again only three or four are worth carrying. The music is just some barely noticeable buzzing and droning, the enemies are only three or four similar guys, the story only gets in the way of shooting, and the shooting is way too interspersed with wandering around and trying to find out what you're supposed to do next. There were a few good moments, particularly shooting a bunch of guys with a remote-controlled turret, but that only happened twice throughout the game, I think. And contrary to its name, the game is not scary in the slightest, all the attempts at horror fall completely flat. Overall, a really boring experience that I cannot in good conscience recommend to anyone.
