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.
Fluid combat, beautiful graphics, awesome weapons and flawlessly animated enemies? Doom is just about perfect and a pure joy to play. Sure, not much of a story to it but who cares when you rip a demon's head off?
After about 3 hours and 30 minutes I finished the story of ASAMU, a first person platformer that lets you play as a kid searching for his uncle who is also a scientist. To aid you in this pursuit, the game lets you play with a grappling hook as well as a rather handy suit that lets you jump incredibly high and leap just as far. Zooming around platforms while grabbing hold on various objects is fairly entertaining but I'm happy the game wasn't any longer. You actually do come across some NPC characters in the game and for a small team it's not a bad creation despite lacking in the production quality of a big budget release. The jumping can be pretty frustrating at times and the game isn't always to keen on telling you where you can and can't grab on to things. It can at times be a bit confusing when you get lost in the identical floating islands, trying to understand where the game wants to to head next. Landing some jumps and swings can be fairly tricky but all in all, the game has a fairly reasonable difficulty setting I'd argue.
I always thought Ghost Warrior 3 was a tad underrated as a game so I gave SGWC a chance with open eyes. Visually it's a decent game I guess but it's definitely in the AA category - compared to the X-ray shots of the Sniper Elite-series, the gory kill shots aren't exactly impressive. You play as Seeker, some sort of mercenary that infiltrates the fictional Siberian republic (a breakaway region of Russia that has declared independence) and in 5 different maps you are tasked with eliminating certain figures as well as doing other commando-esque tasks such as retrieving intel and the occasional sabotage. Besides human foes you have to deal with cameras and automated turrets but fortunately you have a hi-tech mask, essentially a pair of magic binoculars that lets you tag enemies and track their movements around corners as well spotting mines, drones and displaying items of interest in the enviroment. Gameplay-wise, it's sneak em'up combined with sniping, lots of sniping. On the standard difficulty, the regular shot isn't very challenging as you rarely face enemies beyond 300 meters but the challenge lies more in the puzzle of picking the correct order of dispatching your foes without anyone noticing and if you are spotted, it's time to retreat before the goons starts firing back - a few shots from an AK is enough to put you down so open fire fights are best avoided. There isn't much of a story to SGWC and compared to SGW3, it feels scaled back. It doesn't help that the game is still buggy more than 5 years after release and enemies magically disappear when you leave an area, which is an easy thing to exploit since any corpse left behind will also vanish and not return when you do. Bugs frequently shows themselves when you load a save file, for instance a drone jammer that I took out came back into service after I respawned but you could no longer destroy it. Enemies also get stuck in the terrain on the regular. All in all - a decent but not great game.
I played this game many years back on my PS Vita and oh man, what a gem it is. A great puzzler that is sure to make you scratch your head from time to time - a solid recommendation if you enjoy the genre!
I just finished this game after playing for about 2 hours, a short and fairly basic platformer with some light puzzle challenges that few players would find difficult. The focus in White Shadows isn't the gameplay however but the setting: a dystopian society very obviously inspired by Orwells "Animal Farm" where birds are persecuted and treated horribly. You play as one of these birds who seeks to escape the torment of the pigs and other animals. White Shadows definitely has its charm and the ambiance is great but the plot doesn't exactly blow you away and the themes of xenophobia and oppression just feels shallow after a while. The game is obviously 'inspired' by Limbo which is not a bad thing but with so little to offer in the form of gameplay, it needs a more captivating story to compensate.
