I just finished Metal Eden (ME) on the hard difficulty and I loved it. You play as Aska, a "Hyper unit", a sort of cyborg super soldier that is tasked with finding some sort of cores from a space station that takes the shape of a sprawling mega city. That is basically all you need to know about the story: ME is a game that focuses on gameplay with fast paced action, tight shooting and difficult fights in mostly arena battles were Aska is facing waves of robotic enemies and humanesque soldiers. Besides the arena battles, the game has some platforming sections focusing on wall running while traversing the city which gives a great sense of speed and gives some nice variety to the experience. The essential gameplay loop in combat focuses on "core extraction" from enemies, essentially ripping out their robot hearts and consuming these which gives Aska back some health and temporarily boosting her speed, damage output and the ability to bash enemies with hard hitting punches. The extraction mechanic has a timer and so does health-, armor and ammo pickups in the arena so you need to time your actions and collect these repeatedly during fights to stay alive. ME is very similar to Doom Eternal in terms of pace and style but in my opinion it has a more satisfying rythm to it, on the hard setting the combat is indeed tough and challenging but less punishing than Doom Eternal and thus feels a lot less frustrating when you fail. Being an AA game, it is obviously smaller in scope but besides some bug where certain button prompts won't work (like consuming a core or latching on to grappling points when you mash the buttons) it feels very polished and ran great on my system. ME is an absolutely gorgeous game with great sound effects so if you have capable hardware you are in for an absolute treat. All in all, this is a real gem that hardcore shooter fans really ought to try!
So I just finished Caravan Sandwitch (CS) which I played on my less than beefy laptop - it worked like a charm without any trace of stutter or fps drops - and I came away with a positive experience for the most part. CS is essentially a game about driving and some easy platforming with a puzzle or two and you play as a young girl that travels to a dilapitated and mostly abandoned world where only a handful people remain in a small but closely knitted community. As the store page says, this is post apocalyptic but without the dark grimness of the genre - you collect resources to upgrade your van but also to help the community out in different ways and it's a cheerful experience but not exactly a challenging one. CS is a cozy game in the same spirit as Unpacked - focusing on the narrative and the ambience with a nice soundtrack that helps keep the mood bright but all this comes at a cost - the lack of challenge. CS isn't exactly a walking sim but not too far from it - you can't die and you virtually can't fail at anything. Your character can jump from a cliff without taking damage and there are no enemies to encounter. Some people may find that to be perfect since the result is an incredibly relaxing experience but personally I would've preferred to have some puzzles and a sense of having more impact on the world than what you get in CS - if you help your community out with collecting things they will happily respond with a "great! Thank you!" but that's about it, there is very little visual results of your efforts. The narrative is told through written dialogue - there is no voice acting at all and I'm not sure how I feel about that, on one hand it's nice to have the opportunity to listen to something else while gaming but at the same time, it feels a little bit... lazy? All in all, still a nice game.
I just finished Sam's Story (SS) - the DLC that upon the ending of the main game tells you the story of Artyom's friend Sam and his journey to Vladivostok in an attempt to find his way home to the remains of the united states of America. I'll start with the positives: Visiting Vladivostok feels like a fun change of scenery and if I could pick a russian city where a Metro spin off takes place, Vladivostok would be in my top three so kudos for that although the map is mostly just flooded house ruins - the DLC starts off nice enough with an impressive view of the (former) city at least. I also enjoyed the two new guns that are introduced in the DLC, an assault rifle that can be modified to be semi automatic and a Colt 1911 handgun that is satisfying to use and thus my preferred option for most of the ~5-6 hours that the DLC took to finish. SS also deserve some praise for a rather amusing cutscene when Sam is making friends with a local and they both get hammered and beat up a mutant with the help of a broken liquor bottle. Then the neutrals: Sam is caught in the middle of a fight between different armed factions in the city ruins were one of them is controlling an american submarine and using it as a base of operations but the head of said faction wants to use the sub to leave the city and sail the seas and Sam is tasked with convincing the former captain of the sub to play nice with the group and is offered a trip home to 'Muricah as a reward if he succeeds. It's a serviceable plot but neither trilling nor enticing. Then finally, the negatives: Unlike Artyom, Sam talks, and he talks a lot. He likes to commend himself for finding supplies, he likes to express how he feels about killing his enemies and should he face a locked door, he likes to state the obvious. If you play Metro with russian voice acting, Sam's constant banter becomes even more annoying since the voice actor, who is obviously not an english speaker, tries to sounds like he is speaking russian with a heavy american accent when he is not muttering invectives in english - with a heavy russian accent. What's worse is that Sam likes to use his walkie-talkie to tell NPCs how his adventure is going and the game then slows down to a halt as Sam lowers his weapon and walks sluggishly until the dialouge is over - which is just downright annoying. Traversing a flooded city with a boat might sound fun in theory but in the game it just feels like padding in the form of additional travel time without adding anything fun. The boat handles poorly and there is no point to it other than puttering over open bodies of water to search through the next building after supplies. It's just boring. Finally, the game let's you pick one of two ending cinematics but the final choice of destiny for Sam lacks impact - I just didn't care.
The Two Colones (TTC) tells the story of how a semi-functional human colony in the metro system of Novosibirsk crumbles when the medicine used to combat radiation poision runs out - and it's told through the eyes of a commanding officer (a colonel no less) of the security apparatus who is armed with a rifle and a flamethrower and uses the latter to cleanse the Metro tunnels of undesirable vegitation, spiders and gross weird mutant infections or something. The short DLC is essentially a tale about a flamethrower that is weilded by a troubled man trying to do right. But the flamethrower is still the main star. It's not a bad experience in any way but not exactly indispensible either. If you like seeing sh*t burn to a crisp and witness some sad scenes of human desperation, it's a solid recommendation and if you don't like it - hey, it's over in two hours.
The Metro franchise is an impressive series of action survival FPS that has gone from the janky charm of Metro 2033 to the vastly more polished Metro Last Light and now Metro Exodus, essentially a AAA release (if that label still means anything) that will make beefy gaming rigs sweat when RTX is applied and everything cranked up to max. It is a visually impressive game with great lightning effects and the sound effects are equally good - squeezing off a round in the open without a supressor attached and you will hear the echo of your gunshots with the chilling realization that you have notified every foe around about your presence. Like previous games, the adventure starts off in the subway tunnels of the ruins of Moscow but this time around Artyom and his comrades actually make an attempt to escape the radioactive wastelands of the former capital city and seek greener pastures through different parts and cities of Russia. Without spoiling too much of the story I can at least say that you will get a lot more variation when it comes to enviroments compared to previous games. ME also focuses a lot more on freedom of navigation with each section of the game essentially being an open mini map where you can explore different parts either on foot, by boat or with the use of a makeshift car. I can't say that I personally found that the open world-esqe design gave additional gameplay value just like I didn't care much for the focus on configuring your arsenal to suit your playstyle (where a revolver can be modded into a sniper rifle as an example) - it gives you flexibility at the expense of personality. As in previous games Artyom faces both human foes and various monsters that forces you to adjust your tactics to win. The game includes a rather crude morality system that, besides including some minor side missions to make your NPC team mates happy, encourages you to adopt stealth and non lethal tactics against other humans with the latter meaning that you instead of fire fights sneak up behind foes and knock them out. This gives you the same problem as the Dishonored games: you avoid much of the fun gameplay (shooting) in order to improve your karma and the reward is happier team mates and a more cheerful ending cinematic. Sacrificing fun gameplay to avoid feeling like a mean person is of course an interesting dilemma but it doesn't make the game feel more fun. I should also point out that even on "hardcore" (hard) difficulty, the game rarely becomes challenging and despite the promise of scarce resources, you will be overloaded with ammunition, gadgets and resources for most of your playtime. All in all, I liked Metro Exodus and was compelled to see Artyom's story arc being brought to an end but I would've liked a bit more challenge and a different approach to the karma system.
After eyeing it for some time, I finally decied to give Titan Station a chance. It's a walking sim where you play as David, a blue collar worker who is heavily in debt to various loan sharks and therefor takes a job as a technician on Titan Station, a space station orbiting the Jupiter moon of Titan. The regular crew is missing and David is directed by the station manager to do various tasks only to be drawn in to an increasingly complicated plot about a rogue AI and the usual existential questions that any self-respecting walking sim throws at you instead of, you know, more interactive gameplay. Titan Station does have some (easy) puzzles to handle but besides that it's walking and talking with the help of a, well, walkie-talkie. A game with such meager offerings regarding gameplay needs to absolutely nail the story, presentation and overall ambience to compensate and Titan Station manages mostly: the retro sci-fi setting works great and the game is visually impressive when you consider it's a one man creation. The voice acting isn't too great though: the actors do a good job but sadly, the delivery of their lines aren't always in harmony with the plot - although the story leans increasingly on horror-esque themes that would rationally make David terrified and in a panic, his mood seems to swing wildly with some lines being told with a relaxed confidence that isn't exactly fitting an isolated man going through a personal crisis while also fearing for his life. All in all, I enjoyed Titan Station and while not being perfect, it's worth a playthrough!
I've finished the game on hard and it's a fun but rather standard shooter on semi-open maps - the game adheres closely to the lore and asthetics of the first two Terminator movies so the focus is on survival and blasting the machines with your phased plasma weapons, which you get your hands on after starting off with regular firearms for the first few levels. For fans of the movies, TR is a great experience and it definitely manages to mimic the vibe of the movie scenes where humanity's grim future is displayed: we're talking burned out houses, car wrecks and of course the chilling apperance of the eponymous Terminators. While the overall story arch doesn't need much explaining, it definitely feels in line with the tone of the movies (and especially the first one). The game feels retro in more ways than one, not only because of a certain jank or the AA quality visuals but also because of stiff dialogue and even stiffer facial animations, combined with some rather, shall we say dated portrayals of women. Even on higher difficulty setting, the game rarely becomes challenging and despite their being some enemy variety, all of them can essentially be fought the same way so besides a few sneak em'up missions you can attack head on and will seldomly feel outgunned. While the above paragraph might not sound too appealing, I definitely recommend TR, it's a solid shooter and well worth a purchase.
I just finished playing Psychonauts after having it in my backlog for many years. As a 3d platformer from three console generations ago, Psychonauts holds up impressively well when it comes to controls and gameplay and the humour mostly works pretty well even today. I also enjoyed the various boss battles that helped preventing the game from feeling stale despite my playthrough taking about 17 hours or so and in all honesty, I felt pretty done with the game some time before the credits rolled. The difficulty increase in certain areas are letdown - not because it's impossible to overcome the challenges but because they don't really add any fun but rather detracts from it. Still, I know now why it's considered a classic and I can't wait to give the sequel a go!
I just finished playing Venba, a narrative story about a tamil family that has emigrated to Canada and tries to hold on to their cultural origin. Besides cutscenes (with dialogue options), the gameplay is essentially trying to cook indian (tamil) dishes (such as dosa) by following instructions from the torn pages of a family cookbook. You heat the stove, mix the ingredients etc. in a handful of (easy) mini games which aren't exactly challenging but immersive enough to make me hungry. Besides authentic sound effects consisting mainly of the fizzing from cooking oil, the game sports a nice soundtrack with tamil music I can only assume is 'authentic' - I enjoyed it at least. The story is pretty straight forward about the challenges of migrating to a culturally different place and how it feels to be different - it's not exactly deep but with enough impact to make the game feel worthwile. All in all, Venba is a great way to spend ~2 hours when you want a relaxing gaming experience.
I just finished the campaign in MM after about 7+ hours (playing on hard difficulty). It's obviously an indie game with limited production quality but it's not a bad game. A standard FPS with some puzzles in a linear campaign set in a sci fi setting where an astronaut is forced to battle his way through hordes (or more honestly groups) of hostile robots to prevent an attack on earth itself. For an indie game, MM does a rather impressive job at keeping things varied. You get the chance to control various vehicles (space ships, submarines and moon rovers) and the puzzle challenges makes for a nice change of pace at times. Certain environments are also downright gorgeous to look at, my favorite being an icy world where you fight your way across large ice floes. The weapons are rather rudimentary with the usual bunch of assault rifles, shotguns and sniper rifles that basically look like the modern arsenal of any current army and the shooting is standard, period. Sure, you can throw grenade and slow down time but you rarely need to use either one to dispatch the handful of different enemies that you encounter. The writing and voice acting are essentially B-tier without spoiling too much but the story is serviceable and the ending sequence is actually pretty cool. What I will say though is that the Kickstarter campaign that I backed to get Moon Mystery is one of the worst ones I've experienced with the GOG release lagging behind other platforms for more than six months and Moon Mystery still lacks achievments and soundtrack on GOG. That is just plain bad on their part but I won't stoop to review bombing MM - it's a fairly good indie FPS and I hope the team keeps making games but that they'll treat their GOG customers better in the future.
